


Bell Chimes

by Sophisticated_Adult



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Wizards, Canon blender, Fairies, Gen, Hey! Listen!, not even being a wizard will save Magnus from Roddy's pestering, we just don't know, what the heck is a canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophisticated_Adult/pseuds/Sophisticated_Adult
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fae are thought to be otherworldly, unknowable creatures.<br/>They can also be very persistent when they want to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Encounter

**Author's Note:**

> Pointless AU fluff. ~Deal With It~

The fairy was back.

It was flitting around his lamp as though inspecting it, or possibly taking it as a challenge, given the way it kept changing the colour of light it emitted to match the lamplight before changing back to the apparently preferable yellow gleam that seemed to indicate positive emotions.

That was as much as Ultra Magnus could guess, anyway, because he was far from being an expert on the ways and means of the fae. He did know enough to know that he hadn’t invited this one into his home, yet here it was. What had started out as an annoyance had, possibly by sheer attrition, become something of a familiarity. He’d stopped looking up banishment spells, anyway. It was never around when he was ready to cast them in the first place.

Magnus still wasn’t sure what had attracted it here. He kept no milk or honey, no wind chimes, no mystical objects as far as he knew. He had simply been looking forward to a few months of solitude, to study and write and research. At no point had he summoned a fairy companion to twinkle at him out of the corner of his eye. It might have been the lure of magic, or even the possibility of magic that wizards carried, that had drawn the fairy here. If that was the case then the little one was going to be disappointed. He was no sorcerer, throwing spells around with little cause. No, he far preferred the quiet satisfaction of dissecting how it worked than the actual casting itself.

“What is it?” Magnus murmured softly, feeling like a giant as the tiny creature got bored with the lamp and alighted on his desk instead. Although he could see no more of it than a golden ball of light about the size of a golf ball, the way it moved looked for all the world like a purposeful stride. It was hard not to imagine a miniature person bending forward to peer at his notes and getting fairy dust on them. He would have to gather it carefully later. Taken forcefully, it would fade to a mix of ash and dust within the hour, but even that could be of use to one whose creativity outweighed their morals. Given freely, it was incredibly valuable. 

The tinkling sound of bells filled the cabin, normally silent save for the scratching of his pen. From the way the fae-light glittered and shook slightly, emitting the occasional flashing pulse, Magnus had the sneaking suspicion he was being laughed at.

“You’re the one who came in here,” he said reproachfully. “It’s hardly my fault if I’m not exciting enough for you.” The piece he was working on, the properties of various common flora and their uses – particularly in potion-making, one of his favoured areas – would be of no use to a fairy. Likely this one would know inside-out everything there was to know about flowers that didn’t involve humans. It had to have come from the forest nearby, and there was nothing he was writing about that would surprise it.

The ringing chimes continued, the fairy apparently unimpressed with his reasoning. It flitted into the air, buzzed around of a bit – he was sure the loop-the-loops were showing off – until it landed on his shoulder.

Magnus went very still. If he shut his eyes, he could just barely feel it: the smallest amount of pressure barely brushing down from two points on his left shoulder. It seemed fairies did, indeed, have physical bodies somewhere inside that orb of light. 

He carefully moved the paper that had been showered with the fairy dust to his right, hyper-aware of the watching presence on his shoulder. His notes were boring, then. What did he have that would interest a fairy? Enough books to serve an army, or so it felt, but to get any of them would mean moving, and that would almost certainly send the fairy zooming off somewhere. He felt an odd sensation on his shoulder, and when he realised what it was he nearly laughed.

It was _tapping its foot._

That moment did a lot to undo the mystical, ethereal other-ness that humans, wizards included, tended to view the fae with. He was reminded, absurdly, of the cat Prowl had when they had shared an apartment. She was a beautiful Siamese, but her looks soon became diminished once you knew her imperious manner that said: y _ou may entertain me now, puny human, and not after you finish the paper you only have a week left to do because someone took the book you need from the library._ It wasn't quite the same vibe, but it was close enough that Magnus actually chuckled. 

“If you wish to do something, you'll have to show me. I'm not a mind-reader.”

There was a single chirp, less evocative of a beautiful nightingale and more a delighted robin when the fairy immediately leapt into the air, flashing colours from red to orange to yellow. It went straight for the bookcase, as he'd thought, but a second thought arrived that wondered if there truly was anything there that would interest it. Surely potion-brewing, pronunciation guides, or a treatise on alchemy he'd partly translated in college and kept mainly for nostalgia reasons would offer nothing to it. 

It seemed to bounce from shelf to shelf, the bright yellow growing worryingly darker as its movements became sharper, almost erratic from the way it looked like there was no direction to it. What had it been expecting from the wizard who wrote boring notes? As he watched, Magnus felt with a creeping certainty that it would never visit again, not after this. His cabin would become as peaceful as it had been before his uninvited guest started appearing daily. 

A week before, he would have been glad.

The fairy gave a sudden explosion of colour, zooming all the way back to the cheerful yellow from the near-crimson it had been before it discovered the bottom shelf. Magnus hurried forward to see what the prize was, his heart bottoming out in relief as he crossed the thin brown carpet in a few strides. He had to crouch down, because even the lightest book couldn't be lifted by his now-eager companion, who kept pulsing light - perhaps it had no higher colour to go to than yellow as it hovered over its chosen book.

After making sure it was the right book and retrieving it, Magnus couldn't help but smile. A guide to myths, a sort of beginner's how-to-identify-that-symbolism. It had its use as a handy reference book in the past, but he'd actually been planning on selling it on to someone who could make better use of it since he'd moved on to other areas. 

Now, though, it was the most precious thing he owned.

“All right,” he said, flipping through to refresh his memory. He settled back into the chair at his writing desk, and to his surprise and pleasure, the fairy settled on his left shoulder once more, now a more sedate orange. Magnus opened the book to a random page, and when this drew no objections, he started reading out loud.


	2. Second Opinion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so, that thing were I get a positive comment on an old (and I mean old) fic and it inspires more happened again
> 
> So thanks to TofuNinjaCat, this is entirely your fault.
> 
> Heading in a more IDW direction, I'm 99% sure I wrote the first part before I ever read MTMTE but it feels right for this Magnus.
> 
> This continues to be utterly pointless AU fluff, because that is My Jam. Also ft. a very thinly veiled reference to The OTP. (It isn't the first one that you spot)

_March 21st._

_I am sure I am spoiling my visitor. Yet such a gift is left each time that I can scarce complain._

It was actually starting to be something of a problem. The small vial soon hadn't cut it – he'd ended up having to re-purpose one of the big glass jars he used to hoard specimens he picked up in his excursions into the woods behind the cottage. Ultra Magnus was hardly averse to cataloguing and re-organising, but he'd not expected to have to do so this soon.

It sat in the corner of the room by the bookcase, and it was nearly a quarter full already. Surely the fae knew how much humans valued the dust they shed, freely given or not, but this one didn't seem to care that it was causing an influx in the market, as it were. Magnus was loathe to start looking for buyers, knowing it would bring too much attention to suddenly have so much of such a valuable resource. At the same time, he knew too little of the fae – the one book he'd near memorised in the past week hardly counted, he thought – to make much use of it. 

So Magnus made his way down the gentle slope into the village one day, and made straight for the little ramshackle library he'd scoured through upon his first arrival. To think that he'd thought it had nothing left to offer him after several thorough trips some months ago.

“Hey there, mister wizard,” the young man behind the desk offered a grin as he deftly stamped the stack of books Magnus had eventually picked out. _'HELLO, my name is JAZZ'_ was scrawled across a clearly home-made name badge pinned haphazardly to his tattered jacket. “Back for more?”

“Yes,” Magnus replied, stonefaced. To his credit, the black-haired youth chose not to comment on the handful of books at the bottom of the stack aimed at a rather...younger audience, one attracted to the pink and glitter that adorned the covers. Magnus'd had to kneel to look carefully through the bottom shelves, picking out every single title he could see that featured fairies. He would have the entire set of 'Flower Fairies and the Forest of Fun' except someone had already taken out volumes four and seven, and he knew that the missing numbers would irritate him once everything was arranged on his bookshelf later. Hopefully the little creature that made a habit of invading his property would not mind so much.

Besides that, there were a few more scholarly texts – he supposed that having their own clan outside their back doors made the fae a more popular subject in this village library than back in the city. Or would that make them more ordinary, boring, even?

Well, Ultra Magnus was hardly one to dislike boring things. It was practically his life's work.

“If that's what you're researchin',” Jazz mentioned just as Magnus had properly sorted his books first by weight and then by size, in order to make them easier to carry, and was ready to leave. “Might want to head down to the bar. Swerve's read pretty much every book in here at least twice. Including those.” He indicated his head at the top of the pile, where the Rose Fairy and the Pearl Princess reached out for each other across the bright pink title page. “I bet he'd love to talk.”

\---

“Oh man, I can't wait for the next one,” the bartender said as Magnus placed his newly-acquired books beside him on the countertop. “You're in for a treat. It starts out slow, but it gets really good.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, those,” the squat little man said, tapping the topmost book. “I know, they're meant for kids, but that doesn't mean they have to be bad or that adults can't enjoy them as well, right?”

Ultra Magnus stared.

“Er, sorry. I mean, what can I get you?”

“Ah. You must be Swerve.” It was the name outside the rather shabby bar, to be fair. Swerve brightened. “Yeah! That's me! Anyway...?” He trailed off expectantly, and Magnus realised that he hadn't actually been planning on buying anything. The last time he'd imbibed alcohol was at university, and it was such a dreadful experience that everyone involved (mostly via threat of Prowl) agreed that Magnus was allowed to be left out of any wild merrymaking without hassle. It made things remarkably easier.

Magnus coughed.

“I don't actually-”

“Er, wait, hang on.” Ultra Magnus could do little but sit, nonplussed, as Swerve turned and pattered into his back room, emerging after a while with -

“Here. I've already read 'em, they're just my favourites.” Magnus stared. Offered in Swerve's outstretched hands were volume four, _The Sunset Fairy's Big Night Out_ , and volume seven, _The Midnight Fairy Learns A Lesson._

“Swerve. These are library books.” The stickers on the front, one unfortunately covering up the titular Sunset Fairy's face, said as such.

“Yeah, so?”

“I can't-” the very thought of such flagrant disregard for how the whole system was supposed to work made him shudder. “It's already taken out in your name. We can't very well both borrow them at once.”

“Dude, I don't think Jazz'll care.” A hard argument to counter, indeed, but every fibre of Magnus's being was standing on edge. Still, it seemed there was little way get out of Swerve's offer, so after a moment he accepted it and carefully placed them on top of his pile. The little man beamed when he did so, while the Midnight Fairy glowered at him from the front cover. The artist had done a good job on her expression.

Nevertheless, as genuinely sincere as Swerve was, Magnus needed real facts about the real fae, not an in-depth yet entirely fictional account from someone who avidly consumed children's media, as he learned when Swerve spoke at length of his opinions on the tie-in animated series that had recently come out. Mostly they were positive, but by the end of the topic Magnus still had no idea what a 'headcanon' was, despite how passionate Swerve seemed about them. It was so hard to sort the useful information from the babble that, as he got home later that day, it seemed like it was best just to discard it all as nonsense, if well-meaning nonsense.

Yet he didn't feel like his time was wasted. Odd, that. Perhaps the little fae had helped with that, eased him somewhat into the idea of...recreational time. But Magnus was still Magnus, and it would be a while yet until he felt comfortable doing nothing at all.

He switched the light on and trod heavy steps through the hallway to his study. He put the books on his desk, and considered. It wasn't always a guarantee that his visitor would appear every night, but there was a fairly regular time of early evening. He had some time to fix himself a meal and look through his spoils from the library. He pushed the window open just a crack, anyway, just in case. He didn't want to potentially cause offence and drive it off at the thought that it was no longer welcome here when it was greeted to the sight of a closed window and no wizard at his study.

He chuckled. Such a temperamental little thing, but one that had somehow become such a part of his life that he was starting to schedule around it.

It turned out that he needn't have worried. As he sat at his kitchen table, sandwich in hand and leafing through one of the more reputable texts he'd acquired that day, a small yet familiar bright light appeared at his window – hesitant at first, but bobbing up and brightening further when it must have spotted him.

Ultra Magnus smiled.


End file.
